ABSTRACT
The present outbursts of nationalism in East European post-socialist countries are a reaction to the fact that long years of (Communist) Party rule, by destroying the traditional fabric of society, have dismantled most of the traditional points of social identification. When people now attempt to assume a kind of distance toward the official ideological universe, the only positive reference point at their disposal is their national identity. In the new struggles for ideological hegemony, national identification is used by the exopposition as well as by the old Party forces. On the one hand, national identity serves as a support for the formation of a specific version of the ‘moral majority’ (in Poland, Slovenia and Croatia, etc.) which conceives Christian values as the ideological ‘cement’ holding together the ‘Nation’, demands the prohibition of abortion, etc. On the other hand, the Communist Party in some countries (Serbia, for example) has assumed an authoritarian populistnationalist discourse, thus producing a specific mixture of orthodox communist elements with elements usually associated with fascism. Both national movements – the right-wing moral majority and the authoritarian populism of the Communist Party – have built their power by creating similar fantasies of a threat to the nation and so put themselves forward as the protector of ‘what is in us more than ourselves’ – our being a part of the nation.
